Western Short StoryThe Colonel's ChagrinTom Sheehan

Western Short Story

In
a dark room of his home, in Beverly, Massachusetts in the year of Our
Lord 1908, a man died alone. The house, silent and chilly, had
wrapped its cool arms about the man breathing slowly and labored, no
caretakers immediately at hand, and none frankly wanted. His name was
Edgar Charbonneau, retired colonel of the 4th
Cavalry of the U. S. Army, last day of duty on the plains of Texas in
1885, after 37 years of service.

He
was the saddest man in the world the day of his death, and the
happiest that he was about to pay amends for all his bad deeds.

He
had said, prayed, depended on a last statement: “Give me one day to
make amends, Lord. I’ll take an hour if that’s all You have, or a
minute to be spared this soul.” It was as if an echo had been
allowed to enter the room of his death.

For
all we know at this point, he might have gotten his wish, or his
wishes, but Charbonneau was remembered for a long time after his
retirement, and quite often beforehand; some people of northwest
Texas called him the Mad Dog of Llano
Estacado, The Earl of Death at Blanco Canyon, The Red River Rogue.
The castigation of names was endless, the meanings intentional and
pointblank, extra weight for the hardiest soul, but especially for an
old cavalryman from the Indian Wars of the Plains.

Edgar
Charbonneau was a major at the Battle of the North Fork of the Red
River in September of 1872, a battle between Comanche Indians and a
unit of the U.S. Army’s 4th
Cavalry. Charbonneau’s opponents were led by chiefs of the
Comanche; Mow-way (Hand-shaker or One-Who-Shakes-Hands), along with
sub-chiefs Tosawi (Silver Brooch) and Bowahquasuh (Iron Shirt). It
was the army’s first big hit at the fearful Comanche in the western
panhandle of Texas, in a stretch of land about 40 miles long called
Llano Estacado (the staked plain).

That
singular campaign still resounds with the death of many women,
children and old men, a mark that Charbonneau, to his last days,
could not erase, his commiseration long and noteworthy for a
decorated officer. Some observers at the time of the campaign voiced
the concern that the battle was “only dredged up and carried out to
bring a massacre down on the Comanche savages.” The observations,
from both military types and non-military types, weighed heavier on
Charbonneau’s chest than the cluster of medals and ribbons bestowed
on him during his long service. It was reported that he quashed a
commendation that he be awarded the Medal of Honor, berating a junior
officer who had written a commendation, though two cavalrymen from
the ranks were so awarded for actions in the same battle.

The
long haunting in him all those years was cemented in place one
fateful day when fighting slipped away from the edge of his command,
and a mother and child, Comanche of course, were not only shot, but
their bloods mixed by the end of a bayonet penetrating both souls as
the mother tried to flee the battle scene. A drunken sergeant, nearly
falling from his mount throughout the attack, stabbed them with one
maddening trust and struggled to free the weapon. In anger, sadness,
embarrassment, Charbonneau almost shot the man. The only thing saving
him was the idea of losing his commission. Never forgotten was the
quick and insidious bearing of the inner turmoil that wracked him
then and all through his coming days, all of them.

Years
after the battle, and after he retired, he went again with a son to
visit the Llano Estacado. The son had refused too long making the
visit, until it was obvious his father was bound to go alone, driven
by an emotion he had not let go of.

The
son had repeatedly denied his father, saying, “They were only
savage Indians, Pa, sworn enemies who had killed many of your own
comrades. You can’t be sorry for them. Not now. Not ever.”

Such
reasoning had not penetrated the son’s thinking … until that
moment. It was July 17, 1900, in Llano Estacado, the temperature was
56 °.
Charbonneau felt the chill running through his body because the day
before had been much hotter. At least he thought he’d found the
reason; so did his son, until they both realized that many of the
visitors to memorials in the area were staring at Charbonneau, not
that they recognized him, but might have.

Those
staring at him were, to a man, Indians of the Comanche nation.

One
elderly Indian, in a wheelchair being pushed by a look-alike daughter
or a granddaughter, asked him if he had ever been to Llano Estacado
before. The Indian, wearing a scar across one cheek that he touched
several times, showed no other battle reminders, though an aura,
deeply perplexing, sat about him fully known but as hidden as heat
from an iron stove.

Charbonneau
was hard put to answer at first, until the Indian said to his
daughter, calling her Yellow Moon Walking but in the old tongue, “He
will answer when he’s ready, Yellow Moon Walking, because he has
the old eyes that I have. We have seen the Llano Estacado in the bad
times. All strangers who are not strangers to Llano Estacado say so
with their eyes.”

His
eyes had not moved from Charbonneau and had not even looked at
Charbonneau’s son.

The
old Indian shifted in his seat, kept a stone face though his body was
saying it harbored pain, and said, “I am called Bear Claw, and you
are a cavalryman. Is that not so?” He held up an open hand, thumb
tucked into his palm, showing the spread of just four fingers and
Charbonneau understood him to be saying, and recognizing, the 4th
Cavalry,
the infamous enemy of the battle near McClellan Creek.

“I
came here with the 4th
Cavalry,” Charbonneau said, his eyes again saying the words that
were difficult to say. In a stiff moment of gathering himself,
pulling harsh memory into place, the retired major and plains fighter
said, “and I have carried the pain of those days with me as my
personal baggage for all these years. I have kept the scenes of that
time in my mind, and at night the pain comes back with each image.”

His
son’s hand, in a subtle gesture, touched the shoulder of his
father, and Bear Claw, in recognition of something hidden, said, “I
have Yellow Moon Walking to help me with the pain as you have your
son at this time.” It was a revelation.

Bear
Claw, aware of signs emanating from different sources about them,
said, “I saw Chief
Kai-Wotche and his wife at their dying. I escape with Mow-way,
Shaking Hand way you say it, and he die long ago, fighting bear in
mountains. His heart carry biggest wound before he meet bear on two
legs. How did other cavalry riders manage getting old, those who ride
off with you?”

The
question was not perceived by Charbonneau to be a rebuking or
castigating his old comrades. It was the way Bear Claw came at
people, and it must have been the way, he thought, that Bear Claw
fought his battles, straight on, heedless of danger and the ultimate
that comes to warriors.

Though
he saw that Bear Claw wore signs of battle, of age, he also noticed
the Indian exhibited an unquestionable sense of awareness for an old
man, Charbonneau figuring him to be older than he himself was. They
had met again on the battlefield where they had brought arms to bear
against the sworn foe, one believing in his war and the other not
believing in his war.

Through
the long afternoon on July 17, 1900, the new century picking them up
and putting them together, a chill in the air that touched each of
them in the same degree but not in the same manner, they talked. But
after the early conversation, they talked no more of death, of pains
that lingered, of the comrades who had long departed them, the
battles, this life, until the evening crawled
up to the edge of them.

When
an owl made announcements, Bear Claw asked that they meet the next
day, but earlier. “The owl says we old ones must prepare for night.
Can we meet when the owl sleeps tomorrow?”

Colonel
Charbonneau and Bear Claw departed with their escorts, the chill
coming anew, owls calling around, and the moon standing still on a
mountain top.

Eric
Charbonneau said, in the comfort of their motel room, “That old
Indian, that Bear Claw, does not seem to be a hated enemy. And he
seems so bright for an old man, too.”

“He’s
not an enemy any longer,” Charbonneau said, “and perhaps he never
was. Perhaps I am the only enemy in this affair, and I am trying to
let it go.”

Young
Eric Charbonneau said, “He is so much aware of things that I do not
see, cannot see, and might never see. I can say I am glad I never had
to face him in a battle. Is he really that fearsome? Like he is a
seer or a shaman or a medicine man from that other time and can pull
tricks out of a hat. Does he possess something that we do not have?
Can you find that in him, how he sees things we do not see?”

Charbonneau
thought about his son’s questions and his observations. “You must
be right about him, Eric. I feel those things, though I wonder if my
guilt brings them upon me.”

Yellow
Moon Walking, talking to her grandfather in a room with friends that
evening, said, “The old colonel bears great guilt in his soul, and
he exposed it all today. What will he say tomorrow when we meet
again. We will meet again, won’t we?”

“Yes,
Yellow Moon Walking, we will meet again. The colonel is not relieved
of all that he bears. He will meet us whenever he can as long as the
guilt hangs upon him.”

“I
think you are right again, Grandfather, as always.” The great smile
crossed her face the way the moon first touched her. A light bronze
beauty rode on her skin and her eyes, pale as a new shrub, a green
shrub, also carried a glow.

The
old warrior, wondering what the old cavalryman was doing at that very
moment, found an inkling of it in his mind and knew it came from late
images belonging to Llano Estacado.

The
two old warriors, with their personal escorts and ready hands, came
again for a few days of Eric Charbonneau’s vacation before the trek
by train was again undertaken to cross the whole country, back to the
edge of the ocean where Atlantic mist rose each day, the old colonel
hoping always it was trying to wash his soul, to cleanse it.

Bear
Claw admitted he himself came each day to Llano Estacado memorials,
the seen and unseen ones, to appease the spirits of the lost who
might wander forever if not thought about, recalled in personal
demands by the living, and brought out of the lost world for at least
a few minutes of each day. “They are caught up in a strange world,
and I am pledged to assist their journeys through time. That is my
weight.”

Charbonneau
said, “Is it demanded of all your days without peace within, the
same as within me?”

“Ah,”
Bear Claw replied, “it is said that if one man for one minute can
clear worries, sins, guilt, and all the ponderous enemies from his
soul, then for that one minute he has an edge on an hour. That is all
one needs, an edge on an hour; and think what it promises for that
man.”

One
old warrior shook his head again. “How do you know everything there
is to know? Who taught you? The elders of your tribe?”

Bear
Claw was silent for a few moments and then replied, “If I knew
everything, I would have a place up beyond and would show you what is
coming, for I do know the weight that lies on you. Is not for us to
escape, but to endure for all others as long as we can, only then
would we know everything there is to know, what comes at us in the
end or,” and he paused to look out over the sea of grass before he
continued,” in the beginning.”

Charbonneau,
with a shrug of his shoulders, said, “But the punishment …?”

“You
are right. We are prisoners, but we look for that one minute with an
edge.”

And
so it was, in the mist of a morning beside the cleansing Atlantic, in
a room in a house in Beverly, Massachusetts, on July 17, 1908, the
retired colonel of the 4th
Cavalry caught again the full words of Bear Claw, dead now for half a
dozen years.

Neither
old warrior had seen what had been coming around them. Or what was
happening right in front of them. But it came now in the one clean
minute prayed for and promised, the edge also being made on lifetimes
with the unexpected but happy union of Yellow Moon Walking and Eric
Charbonneau, both consigned to love, raising their children, paying
continual homage to lost souls of Llano Estacado.